Fav's of '07

Top Five Albums:
1. Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
2. In Rainbows - Radiohead
3. The Reminder - Feist
4. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon
5. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse

Top Five Songs:
1. The Underdog - Spoon
2. Hate it Here - Wilco
3. All I Need - Radiohead
4. Hurricane - Allie Peden
5. Sea Lion Woman - Feist

Top Five Movies:
1. Juno
2. The Darjeeling Limited
3. No Country for Old Men
4. I'm Not There
5. Waitress

"Let me think about that for a while..."

I tend to get stuck on things. I have seen this film (The Darjeeling Limited) 3 times now. It seems to cater to my desires so well that I never want to leave the world it creates. I want the oppurtunity to go somewhere and hash it all out, so to speak. I often get the idealistic idea of picking up and going somewhere for an undefined period of time, leaving my cell phone, computer...behind. In my mind, I would leave a note for my loved ones...something to the effect of:

Dear loved ones,
By the time you read this I will be well on my way, my destination is undetermined, as is my time of return. All I know is I am heading west. Wish me luck in finding what I need.

love,
Mike

My plan is also to leave on my motorcycle which I will someday own.

I have been trying to write. Short stories for now but with the eventual goal of writing a screenplay of sorts. Film is something that I have always had a mild to severe obsession with and I often dream of creating one myself. I figure no better time than now to start trying.

Wish me luck in finding what I need.

-mike

Beauty in the spaces between...

I saw a film last night that made me very happy. It's called "Mutual Appreciation." It's about guy in his early 20's moving to New York to try and get his music career off the ground. Perfect, right? What's interesting is that nothing happens in this movie...seriously nothing...which doesn't sound like a good thing when I say/type it; However, this is the only film I've seen where this type of anti-narrative works reeeeeally well. All the characters are instantly likeable and always honest. The viewer is simply forced to assume that the real action of this story goes down between the cuts. Although I may not understand completely the meaning behind this technique, I know that I felt like I was watching a perfect representation of "our generation." So much of the conversation and relationships reminded me of myself and my peers that it almost made me uncomfortable. This is a much more accurate and honest representation of my generation than the exaggeration and idealism of, say, Garden State. I think I forgot to mention that this movie is hilarious. Scope it.

Jive on This

Once upon a time I was a youth group kid. I wasn't, however, a "youth group" kid...if you will...My friends and I did go to 3 youth group meetings per week, we did feel guilty about not asking each other about our "walks with the lord" enough, and we did look down on every poor, secular peer in our high school...but... we were "cool" youth group kids...this is how we were different. While most youth group kids would spend their spare time planning the next youth event, we would go fishing off in the sewage-infested water of Lake Ontario; While other youth group kids would sit home alone reading the latest John Eldredge book or doing their homework, we would be out filming each other embarassing strangers or jumping off playgrounds...

....ok the truth is that we weren't very cool...or we were REALLY cool...im not sure which. All I know is that we felt pretty damn good about ourselves given the fact that we weren't faced with the temptation to "party" or "swear" like the lost souls of our high school. I also now know that something in our bodies was telling us that we were a little off base...resulting in us forming a high school fraternity, which met weekly and consisted almost exclusively of us letting out our inexplicable aggression on each other in irrational competitions and "fat kid vs. skinny kid" medieval battles. Another interesting product of our spare time was the production of short videos. We would often shoot faux-documentaries about things such as "Publishers Clearinghouse training camp," and a fake boy band managed by our youth leader.

This is what brings me to "Jive on This." "Jive on This" is band formed as a side project to the band "Nudist Buddhist" whose principal members were Phil Byers and Chris Sterling. "Sleighbells" is a song we recorded at Parkminister church sometime in 2003 or 2004. It was completely improvised, we picked a key which allowed Phil to simply play any black key on the keyboard, I played drums and guitar, and Chris played bass. The following is the subsequent music video we filmed for the song. Enjoy.



-MIke

Carl's Camera pt. 2

The purpose of the above picture is to document the historic micing of Ivan Colon's vocals from the back of a trash can. This is a production move that I am very proud of and the results can be heard on the opening track of Ivan's EP, "Despite the Atlantic."

The Mountains, nephew Damon...Why don't I Live Here?

Big Beard Recording

Winter Came.

Happy Valentine's Day. In spite of the fact that I spend this holiday alone (in the "Valentine" sense of the word) I feel at this moment that my heart is full and my mind is a bit overwhelmed. My Dad just left after spending almost two weeks helping me build up my new studio. When I say "helping me," I really mean discussing with me certain ideas and fantasies about how we could make the studio great, and then him doing it while I do other things. By the end I couldn't handle the amount of effort he had put into helping me out. It really looks amazing and I can't thank him enough.

The aforementioned "other things" I have been doing entail almost exclusively working on the Tyler James record. We are about 2 weeks into it and have 2 more to go. I've been able to fulfill a few of my dreams with this record. One of which is taking a great band and being able to record them live (which we did the first week at Sputnik). The Biv guys were able to help out with the live tracking which made for a relaxed and creative working environment. We trucked through 11-ish tracks in 5 nights (bass drums, organ, piano, and vox on most) with the help of whiskey, cigarettes, and coffee. It was a great time and I am grateful to have been a part of it. Now we're working at my new place doing random overdubs.



I've been throwing around some possible names for the studio. Some tentatives include: Ivy Road Studios, The Ivy, Beard Studios, Big Beard Recording...still working on it.

That's all for now.

Love and Respect. Happy Valentine's Day to all.

-Mike

My best of 2006 (you should care about this...trust me)

Top 10 Albums:

1. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go
2. M. Ward - Post- War
3. Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
4. Danielson - Ships
5. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
6. Vollmar - Beach Blanket Vollmar
7. Band of Horses - Everything all the Time
8. Cat Power - The Greatest
9. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
10. Yo La Tengo - I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

(*note* - I am positive that Tom Waits' "Orphans" would be my #1 but I haven't had the money to buy it yet.)

Top 5 Songs:
1. "Chinese Translation - M. Ward
2. "Wai" - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
3. "My Love" - Justin Timberlake ft. T.I
4. "Everybody Daylight" - Brightblack Morning Light
5. Beirut - Postcards from Italy

Happy 2007!

-mike